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Great article, thank you! A lot of food for thought.

To be honest, I would set a distinction between a manager and a leader. They often overlap, but they’re not the same, in my view. The best managers I’ve had the honor to work with leveraged the leadership techniques and projected natural authority, empowering their team and supporting autonomy, while shielding from some bureaucracy and overcommunication. I would argue that taken far enough, it very much resembles the holacracy or sociocracy, if you will, with the exception that the operational leader is set by an external authority rather than selected.

There’s nothing to prevent higher circles to set and communicate the vision clearly to other circles, to coordinate. The difference is the power to enforce it vs. necessity to influence and align. I’d suspect the difficulties come mostly with the ability to implement the flat structure correctly (i.e. functionally). I agree, it’s not an easy feat. There must be right people, right mindset, right culture. It doesn’t work for everyone by far.

My question is: Do the findings suggest that the companies don’t work well without management, or is it rather the leadership that is the secret component? Successful flat hierarchies do have the leadership, by the way; it emerges naturally in a human society. How much are top-down approval and centralized decision-making actually contributing to the success? I would imagine it very much depends on the culture, although I remain skeptical that these would be the key factors for happiness and productivity in general. Possibly in non-creative, repetitive work.

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